


A Beautiful Lady in White

by RobberBaroness



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Harm to Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one tragic, golden-haired maiden named Lucy haunting the world of gothic horror.  Cases of mistaken identity are inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Lady in White

The strong prey upon the weak; Mr. Todd had said so himself, in an effort both to attack those who’d wrong him and to justify his attacks on others. And nobody is weaker than an innocent child. The beautiful lady in white wanted life, and he gave it to her. She wanted blood, and he was in no position to refuse. She wanted love most of all, and in him she found a kindred spirit, as desperate as she for a single kind glance.

And so she took from him more than from any other, and he did not fight back. What was more, she gave to him in return.

“Drink,” she said, the palm of her hand slit open and held before his lips. “If you will be my follower, I shall be your protector.”

He remembered none of what happened, which was as she wanted. She left him cold and pale upon the ground, with only a name and a beautiful dream to take away.

 

***

 

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Mrs. Lovett’s face as she leaned down above him.

“Toby! Toby!”

He did his best to sit up on the couch (when had be been brought home, and who had brought him?) Not wishing his dear Aunt Nellie to worry over him, he tried to smile, but the effort it took to sit up was hard to hide.

“Oh thanks heavens!” she was saying, unaware of his pain. “What could have ever happened to you? You run off in the middle of the night, then I have to beg and plead with Mr. T until he takes me to look for you! You wouldn’t wake up for hours! We thought you might be dying, you poor boy.”

It was only at the mention of his name that Toby noticed _him_ standing in the corner of the room, his eyes upon Mrs. Lovett. Toby knew the horrid man didn’t care for him- what had she been forced to do to make him go out on a search? Or had he gone willingly, afraid Toby had uncovered whatever secret he hid, and that he’d planned to tell the whole town?

Not yet, unfortunately. Someday.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Lovett. I wish I could tell you, but…” A memory, just the briefest picture. “It was a woman.”

“A woman? What woman, Toby dear?”

He tried to picture her face, but it would only come back as a sketch. Toby could at least describe that, even if he left out the details.

“Golden hair, I think. She was beautiful, and she told me there was something I ought to see. I went with her, and then...then I don’t remember.” But he did, or at least there was one more detail. “She said her name was Lucy.”

Why this pronouncement should have made Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd exchange an unpleasent look was more than Toby could understand.

 

***

 

No doctors were called. It was not that Mrs. Lovett didn’t care about her dear boy, but she had no idea what sort of nosey questions they might ask. How did he get so pale? Why did he wander off to the graveyard? Those questions she could answer honestly, saying that she didn’t know but that there was some sort of yellow-haired harpy luring children away from their loving homes and she had to be stopped. But what if they asked about his home life? His diet? What if they wanted to see what it was that he had been eating, and where it was made?

Unlikely, she knew. Still, no doctors were called.

Toby was left to rest, and Mrs. Lovett followed Mrs. Todd to their room.

“You know it can’t be her,” she said steadily. “You know.”

He nodded, but didn’t seem to hear.

“I said, it can’t be her! Your Lucy is dead!” Worse than dead, in fact, which was how Mrs. Lovett knew no vengeful ghost of hers had come to make poor Toby so pale. Of course, if she had been dead, she’d have had every reason to come for Mrs. Lovett and destroy all that she held dear, but those unbidden thoughts were a waste of time.

“For god’s sake, woman, I know!” Mr. Todd spun around upon her, and she took a step back towards the wall. “Lucy isn’t an uncommon name, now is it? Do you think I’m fool enough to suspect every golden-haired Lucy to be my wife?”

His anger did little to mask the fact that, in some way, he did suspect it. She could tell that, and it broke her heart. He would not sleep in their bed tonight, Mrs. Lovett knew; just as well, though, for when he was this angry, the mere act of making love to her left horrible marks Toby would ask about. Questions, questions- everyone wanted to know more than they should.

But before he could order her to leave him be, Mrs. Lovett’s attention was drawn by a clanging sound. Never a moment’s peace, she thought to herself, and ran to its source- the door to the bakehouse. Toby had roused himself from his languid state on the couch and was clawing at the door, of all things! When she reached out to take his hand, Mrs. Lovett was greeted with a terrifying site- he turned his head towards her, and his pallor was offset by burning eyes and the expression of a demon!

 _“I’m hungry,”_ he growled.

“There are pies in the store, Toby” Mrs. Lovett said, managing to keep her composure. “You know you can have all you want.”

 _”Meat. Flesh. Blood. I can smell the dead through the door. I want it!”_ He lunged at Mrs. Lovett, but when she sidestepped him and let him fall upon the floor, everything about Toby changed. His body was wracked with coughs, and his face became that of the sweet boy she usually cared for. His eyes seemed lost, and before she could ask him what on earth had gotten into him, he collapsed once again.

Never a moment’s peace. He would have to be locked away or tied up until he regained his health, or else disposed of before he went screaming about flesh where people could hear him. Why couldn’t anything in Mrs. Lovett’s life ever go the way it was supposed to?

 

***

 

Sweeney was standing by the window when a beautiful woman in white came to the door. She was golden-haired and pale, her face hidden by shadows. For just a moment, he allowed himself to hope...hope for what, he didn’t know, but he let himself be entranced by her graceful movements.

There came a knock at the door, and Sweeney didn’t even need to think before opening it.

The woman was not Lucy. At least, not his Lucy, though there was a similarity in her bearing. But Lucy had never looked so haggard and thin, reminiscent of a beautiful corpse. Nor had her smile ever seemed to mock him, not even when she gently teased. This Lucy nearly blended into the moonlight, so pale and wan, as if she would vanish should he look away for even a moment.

“You have something of mine,” she told him. “I want it.”

Sweeney needed no justification to turn Toby over to the stranger. He was mad, had always been simple, and would in all likelihood need to be done away with soon enough. But when he picked up the sleeping child and handed him, hands bound, to the arms of the strange Lucy, there was an undeniable sense of guilt that came with doing so. Not guilt over disposing of Toby, but over having dared to think his own love might have returned.

She saw this, and smiled- a smile full of hungry teeth.

“Did you think I’d come for you?”

Toby was beginning to wake up in her arms, and she helped him to his feet.

“Come, my child. Let us leave this dreary place.”


End file.
